Fragments
by Renshuusei01
Summary: Fragments of moments from the centuries they spend together. Kazuma and Bishamon centered. 100 x 300 words challange.
1. chapter 1

1\. Blight

"Someone has dared to hurt our lady!" Izuma, the lead shinki, is running around the shrine shouting as she looks for the culprit and blames anyone who tells her to calm down with the battle team following her obediently as always.

Bishamon is blighted.

Someone is going to get exiled. If their mistress survives that is, Kazuma tells himself. Izuma doesn't let anyone other than herself near the goddess. He has seen her only once through a half open paper door when he sneaks to the wing where her bedroom is located. And he knows that she is anything but well.

Izuma orders for all the shinki to be examined. The battle team calls them one by one and checks their napes and upper bodies.

They can't find the blighted shinki.

2\. Together

Kazuma can't help but be afraid. It's been two days already. Izuma has taken a few shinki away to somewhere, claiming that they are stinging Bishamon. They never see them again.

Everytime, she says that she has found the culprit. But no matter how many shinki disappears, the blight continues.

The clan no longer trusts Izuma's judgement. Even Kazuma is having doubts. Why does Izuma refuse to request help? He doesn't understand.

They are having the third examination in the last two days. He passes as always. Behind another curtain, Kiyoma, a female shinki, is checking the females.

Touma goes in just as Arima sends him away. He steps aside to wait for Touma. It shouldn't last that long. He knows that Touma is clean.

He sees Izuma going behind the curtain after asking who is inside. He frowns at that. He knows that Izuma doesn't like Touma for a reason that he isn't aware of. The old woman surely wants to check her herself.

A few minutes later, Touma comes out on her own and he waves a hand at her. They start walking side by side. He immediately notices that something is wrong with her. Inwardly, he knows what happened.

He can remember witnessing many occasions when Izuma scolded Touma and called her useless because of her vessel form. The lead does that to every shinki who doesn't turn into a weapon but she is esspecially hard on Touma as Touma always talks back and never does what she says. Kazuma, himself has been the target of Izuma many times before discovering his talent. Still, those tirades affect Touma the most because she wants to be by Bishamon's side the most. She wants her name to be called.

Kazuma quietly sighs and asks her if she wants to talk about it. She shakes her head and gives him a smile. She is fine, she says. He should worry about drawing a border instead of questioning his senpai. She gives him a playful punch on the arm and keeps smiling after that.

She isn't fooling anyone. He can see the dreariness in her blue eyes. The fear grows in him as he gazes at her. Eventhough her eyes are puffy with unshed tears, the corners of her rosy lips are turned upwards. Eventhough she needs to just let everything out of her chest, she keeps silent and brushes him off when he asks.

She doesn't want to make him more worried for her. She doesn't want to trouble anyone else. Because she is just that good of a person.

Still, he fears for her. He doesn't want anything to happen to her. He draws his lips in a straight line and tries to swallow the churning feeling in his stomach. He knows that she would sooner die herself than sting their mistress. But Izuma doesn't. The woman already wants to get rid of Touma. What if she takes Touma away like those other innocent shinki? What if she sends her away? What if he never sees her again? What if Izuma can't stop the blight and they too turn into ayakashi? What if their mistress dies? What if-

He feels a warmth around his left hand and looks down. Her smaller hand feels soft around his own and suddenly the nausea disappears.

She doesn't say anything as she looks up at him but he understands anyway. She is there with him and he is there with her. They can protect each other from the blight. They can help each other. Even if no one else cares about them, they have each other. They won't lose their way because they both aren't alone. Nothing bad will happen. They will always be together.

He gives her a smile of his own and hers changes. It is genuine now, he realises as he interwines their fingers.

3\. Falling

She is falling. The tears are finally streaming down her face. She shakes her head when he tries to catch her.

The ayakashi surround her frail body a second later and he can no longer see the white of her night yukata.

Arima and Souma hold him and drag him away from the rift when they realise that he is going to jump.

Why, he asks Izuma after everything is over. She answers that the wicked needs to be punished. Kazuma can feel the anger boiling in him and burning him from head to toe at that. Touma isn't wicked. She is the strongest, most clever and most innocent one among them. He knows how much she worked to keep her emotions in check. She always helps out others too. It's thanks to her that he has discovered his ability. It is thanks to her that he-

"Touma WAS the culprit and she is gone now...Kazuma, your eyes hold so much hatred. Be careful or you might sting our lady."

Kazuma glares up at her. Touma was right. This woman can't do her job right. It's her fault that the blight has got out of control. But then again, he knows that she blamed Touma because she couldn't stand anyone talking back to her and pointing out her wrongdoings.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He can still see her falling with her hands and mouth bound. Her tear streaked face and her wide eyes. She is still falling in his mind's eye. And he knows that she will never stop.

4\. Catastrophe

In the end, even the battle team stops listening to Izuma. They all start to blame each other and fight.

The garden is covered in blood and the slayed bodies of shinki. They are killing each other all around him.

"You are the lead. You should bring us together and try to keep everyone calm instead of turning us on each other to catch a culprit! The lady will only get hurt more if we shinki fight and shout at each other like this!"

Touma's words echo in his ears. She was right. And she was killed for it.

Kazuma looks out of the window. Who knew the Ma Clan could crumble in just a few days? He slowly walks to Bishamon's bedroom. All this fighting has started to protect her.

But everyone else has forgotten about her.

He finds her lying on her futon and writhing in pain. She tells him to stay away or else he too would get blighted. He tells her that Touma is dead and that they, as her shinki, have betrayed her. She tells him that he should pomise to stay by her side as her shinki again if she were to die from that blight. They can earn forgiveness for their sins like that.

Kazuma realises that he wants to protect her from everything.

5\. Promise

Kazuma is running. He knows exactly where to go thanks to his ability.

Izuma is dead. Arima, Souma, Kurima, Minema, Kiyoma and everyone else who used to follow her around are dead. And the remaining shinki are all occupied with slaying each other.

He is the only one left. He is the only one on his right mind. The responsibility of their sins are all on his shoulders now. He has to save her somehow.

'Touma...this is for you...I promise you that I will protect her...no matter what becomes of me...no matter how badly I will be treated and despised for it...I promise...'

He has made a promise while trying to ease her pain with holy water. He has made a promise as she shed silent tears for Touma and he, for both women he valued deeply.

Kazuma forces himself to run faster. He is impotent. He can' t stop the Ma Clan on his own. He knows that they are well beyond purification. There is only one way left and he isn't strong enough for that. But...

...there is someone who kills anything for a reasonable price.

A god of calamity.

If he offers his own life, it should be enough to convince him to save his master, right?


	2. chapter 2

6\. Tears

Her tears never stop.

The Ma Clan is dead now. All of her children are gone. She will never see them again. She will never hear their laughs again. She will never sleep hugging one of them again.

They are gone with no trace of their souls remaining and it hurts more than anything she has felt before. That empty feeling where she used to feel their names, that silence where she used to hear their thoughts and heartbeats...

It is even worse than the blight and she knows that if he wasn't there with her, she would have died a long time ago. Kazuma is the last name she can feel far in the distance, the only heartbeat she can faintly hear. He is the thin string that ties her to life and forces her to live.

She tries to find comfort in his presence when she is too tired to sob loudly. She often falls asleep with her head resting on his lap and wakes up alone under the heavy sheets of her bed to start crying again.

She cries for the children she has lost. She cries for Kazuma who she forces to share the pain and stay with a useless, weak woman like herself. She cries for herself. She doesn't know how she will get over her loss. She doesn't know when she will stop mourning.

She just cries. Her tears never stop. Thus, she never feels his which he lets himself to shed only when he is alone, safely locked in his room.

7\. Fear

Years pass slowly. They live locked in a shrine in the Near Shore as Bishamon finds the one in Takamagahara unbearable with the memories. Only Kazuma occasionally goes out to buy some food and other necessities.

He waits for Bishamon to fall asleep before sneaking out quietly because it is impossible to do so when she is awake. He has explained her many times that he has to go out to the marketplace sometimes. Still whenever she catches him preparing to go out, she thinks that he is leaving her for good and she begs him to stay until he decides to not go that day.

She never goes out of her room except to bathe. Sometimes she doesn't let him leave when he goes to her room to take her meals to her. They lie side by side and she nuzzles herself to his side. He always untangles himself and quietly leaves as soon as she falls asleep.

He knows that she is afraid. He is the last one she has left and she fears being alone. She wants the old days back. She wants her shinki back.

Sometimes, he tells her to accompany him outside in the day time. He says that a walk would do her good and that maybe, just maybe she will find another shinki.

She refuses and buries her face in his chest. She tells him that he is the only one she needs. And he feels the guilt that he works so hard to supress awakening whenever she does that.

He knows that she doesn't mean what she says. She can't need him. She is just afraid of the pain that she would experience if she were to lose a shinki ever again. That's why she refuses to give out names and keeps telling him to not leave her.

She doesn't really need him. He is the murderer of the Ma Clan after all. She would hate him if she knew. But he is just too much of a coward to confess.

He is so afraid of being apart from her. He is afraid of not being able to protect her and losing her. He wants to stay by her side. Yet he knows that one day he won't be able to hide the truth anymore and he will have to face that fear.

8\. Birds

Bishamon is lying on her bed. It's nearly evening and she can hear Kazuma walking around in the shrine, probably preparing her dinner.

She sighs and wipes her tear strained face with her sleeve. He never comes into her bedroom unless he has to do cleaning, bring her food or she calls him to help her dress but she can always hear his light footsteps on the old floorboards of the building.

She knows that he works from the moment he wakes to the last hour before he goes to bed. He prepares all of her meals, washes her laundry, prepares her bath everyday and cleans after her besides tending to the building on his own.

He seems to be able to do anything now after nearly two years of being her only shinki. He repairs the roof and the cracked porch himself, he grows vegetables to use for the food and even some flowers to put in her room in vases, he makes her dresses for all seasons...

She feels guilty for using him like a servant. Whenever she apologises for it, he tells her that she shouldn't. But she can see that he isn't fully comfortable and happy there. She sometimes feels small pangs comimg from him but they disappear as soon as she feels them and she knows all too well what that means.

He is stiffling his emotions. There is something he doesn't want her to know but she can guess what it is. He öust be tired. Tired of everything that has happened. Tired of being an only servant. Tired of fearing the ayakashi whenever he goes out of the shrine. Tired of her...

She should talk it out with him. She should ask for his preferances and find a better god who would name him, like he deserves. She should let him be free.

Yet she doesn't.

Why?

Because she is just that selfish. Because she doesn't want to die. Because she doesn't know if she could live without him by her side. Because she needs him. Because she-

The heavy wooden door of the porch creaks as it opens slowly and Bishamon's eyes widen. Is he going out? Is he leaving her?

She gets on her feet and runs out to the hall.

No. He can't leave her. He should stay. She should make him stay. She will-

Kazuma is throwing crumbs of what seems to be bread on the grass and small birds happily eat around his feet. She sees him crouching down slowly and he begins to talk quietly.

He is talking to the birds. He is telling them how much they resemble the birds Touma used to feed. After a few minutes later he takes one in his hand and he starts to tell it about Touma. He says that she is clever, strong and talented but also kind in spirit and that she was the one who helped him around when he was a new shinki.

The bird chirps in his hand and he gives it more bread as his breath hitches. Bishamon grips the doorframe as silent tears fall down her cheeks.

Unfortunately, Touma can't come there to meet them, Kazuma tells the birds as he first wipes a single tear off of his face and then strokes the head of the bird with the same finger.

Bishamon doesn't even feel a small prick. Just how good is he at concealing that sadness?

9\. Omen

Kazuma is lying on his futon and watching the shadows dance on the ceiling as the flame on the small candle trembles.

His body aches, his head throbs and his mind screams for sleep yet he can't manage to close his eyes.

It happens sometimes. He remembers the old days and can't stop thinkng. He thinks about the first day that he was named. He had been saved from being a nameless, mindless, wandering spirit yet his vessel form had hurt the one who saved him.

He knows that the object he turns into isn't something he can control but maybe...

Maybe it s an omen. Maybe Izuma was right on that first day. Maybe Bishamon should have just sent him away. He hasn't done anything but to cause her pain after all.

Maybe he is an omen himself.

Maybe he was the sign of the calamity that would fall upon his family from the start.

That must be true, he decides. He is nothing good.

10\. Choki

Bishamon quietly walks in the dark halls of the old shrine. It is nighttime and Kazuma is already asleep so she has decided to get her own water herself rather than calling for him.

She quietly tiptoes in front of his room but stops when she hears small whimpers behind the paper door. She slowly, carefully slides the door open and steps into the dark room.

She can see Kazuma lying on his futon. His blanket is kicked aside as he trembles and murmurs incoherent words in his sleep. She thinks of waking him but doesn't want to scare him.

Quietly, she sits down beside him and covers him. Then she takes his right hand in hers. She can't exactly see the mark of his name in the dark, but touching it has always given her comfort so maybe he will feel that too, she thinks to herself. She slowly strokes his hair with her other hand.

"Choki..."

She slowly calls out his name. Everything is okay. They are together. Nothing will hurt him or her. Nothing will seperate them. She whispers the most soothing sentences she can come up with more for herself than him but still, Kazuma calms down a few minutes later.

Bishamon slowly raises his hand to her lips and places a tender kiss on the back of it. It's the best way she can express the growing affection she feels for the young man. She runs her thumb over his name and whispers it again.

She wishes she were brave enough to hold his hand and kiss it when he is awake too. She wishes for him to, one day, understand her. He doesn't have to value her as much as she values him. She just wishes for him to stay by her side.


	3. chapter 3

11\. Disappointment

Bishamon has asked Kazuma to stay with her again. He is lying beside her and running his fingers through her hair slowly.

He sighs and closes his eyes.

He doesn't deserve to be there. He is the cause of all her grief. She shouldn't seek comfort in him. She shouldn't hug him like that. She shouldn't want him by her side.

Even when he was first named, he became a nail of all things and hurt her.

He couldn't manage to draw a mere borderline in all the years after that.

When the blight started to spread, he couldn't do anything. He let the battle team take Touma away. He couldn't catch her hand.

The only solution he could think of was to destroy the whole clan.

He kept lying to her for all those years. He never stopped seeing Yato. He has made friends with him behind her back and let her blame him in his place afterwards.

She fell into a depression because of him and ignored all of her godly duties for years. He sees her energy weakening but he can't convince her to answer wishes. Even if he could, he isn't able to assist her and she refuses to take any other shinki because she believes him. She believes a liar like him. She trusts a traitor.

Even now, he is lying to her. He is stiffling the guilt so that she doesn't understand anything. He is trying to make her fall asleep faster so that he can sneak out to see Yato. When she learns everything, she will surely hate him.

He shouldn't hurt her anymore. He should just confess. He should be punished and sent away or even killed. What right does a failure like himself have to survive when all the others are dead?

He is just a disappointment. He has failed her many times. He has betrayed her. He has failed his family. He has failed Touma. That's right, he is nothing more than a disappointment.

12\. Treasure

Bishamon carefully enters Kazuma's room. It is the middle of the night but she has an urge to see him suddenly.

It happens nearly every night now. It has become a habit of hers to check up on him and watch him sleep for some time.

She needs to make sure that he is okay. She needs to see him to be able to sleep herself. She needs to know that he is there. She needs to confirm that he hasn't gone away and won't go anywhere in the night.

She is pitiful. She used to be a goddess but lately, she doesn't feel like one. She has lost everything she had. She was weak. Too weak to protect her family. They are all gone and it's all her fault.

She only has Kazuma left and she is afraid of losing him. She is so afraid of him going away one day that she goes to check if he is still there every night.

She doesn't care. It doesn't matter how low she sinks. It doesn't matter what becomes of her. It doesn't matter if she disappears entirely one day. None of those are important.

Only Kazuma matters to her. He should always be with her because she can't imagine herself without him now.

She needs him. He is like air for her. She needs him to breathe. She needs him to exsist. She can't define it. She doesn't understand the warm feeling in her chest. It's a little uncomfortable but strangely pleasant nonetheless. It's not like anything she has felt before. It's not fear. It's not excitement. It's not happiness. It's not dread. It's not exactly affection. It feels like a mix of all of that but she doesn't know what it is called. She only knows one thing. She will certainly die if she loses Kazuma.

Bishamon pulls the blankets over his sleeping body and smiles down at him. She will not lose him. He is the best shinki she could ever wish for. She is proud of him. He is her treasure. So she will keep him safe no matter what. He will be with her until the day humans forget her and she disappears.

13\. Mirror

Kazuma dresses himself slowly in front of the mirror.

There is no blight on his body. He isn't stinging his mistress. He isn't doing anything wrong. Even if he did something wrong, he would still be rightous as he did everything for his mistress and Touma.

He is repeating the words to himself over and over again like a mantra as he faces his reflection.

He tells himself that he is different from the man he sees in front of himself. He is Kazuma. He is Bishamon's shinki. He is Touma's student. He hasn't done anything wrong. It was all for Bishamon. The reflection is the guilty one. He is the killer, the liar, the traitor...

The mirror is like a window seperating that reality from him and his world. It is safe as long as he doesn't look for too long, he tells himself.

It is a new way he uses to calm down and it's working good in his opinion. He sometimes can feel the ghost of guilt biting him but it is not as strong as it used to be. He is getting better and better at supressing it, he thinks to himself.

That's good. Bishamon is going to learn everything one day. The man in the mirror will face the punishment he deserves then.

14\. Loathing

Bishamon is slowly combing her hair in her room. It's another ordinary summer day passing slowly and quietly.

She is used to the silence now. She is calmer. She can even stay put and continue with what she is doing when she hears Kazuma going out for an errand instead of rushing to pull him back inside and begging him to not leave her as she once did.

She now knows that he will never leave her, she finally believes him fully when he tells her that...

...yet, she can't help but tell herself to let go.

She doesn't deserve him. She isn't worthy of his faith and his love. He shouldn't smile at her. He shouldn't take care of her. He should want to leave. He should treat her with hate. He should scream and cry. He should sting her. He should go away. He deserves better.

She is nothing but the remains of a late goddess. She is only a shell. She is disgusting. She loaths herself and for all she knows, he should do the same.

15\. Alone

He has always been one to find comfort in solitude. He has never liked crowds or the occasions which he has to be among other people.

He has always been different, strange, a freak. Humans have never liked him or accepted him and he has never accepted them for that matter. Yet he has always been aware that he needed them. Although he had a mortal dread of humans, he has always been unable to renounce them.

So, all through his life, he has kept trying to fit in. He has managed to maintain, on the surface, a smile which never deserted his face, an accommodation that he offered to others, a precarious act that he managed to perform only with excruciating efforts within.

He struggled all his life, the curse never leaving him alone or letting him take a breath of relief.

He has never stopped seeing them, feeling them.

In time, he stopped trying to avoid the monsters with many eyes and claws which no one other than him ever saw.

He accepted them, even started to greet them like old friends in the nights after the long sessions of beatings that he spent trying to treat his wounds in pitch dark, too afraid to light a candle lest he could attract the monsters with two eyes each and claw like pitchforks in hand.

He started to talk to them and to him they always seemed to be listening just like they always, always watched. And although only for a few moments, they numbed the crushing pain of lonesome.

Therefore he was happy when he made his decision. He was happy as he walked in the dead of the night in the woods that not even hunters dared to enter after dusk and they followed him.

He had a wide smile on his face as the howling of the wild wolves got louder.

The corners of the lips of the young man were tilted upwards as he laid on the grass, bleeding out. His head was spinning, he was freezing yet, for once not by himself.

He was surrounded by the friends who never insulted him or beat him, the friends who could fly and see everything with their dozens of eyes, the friends who always smiled and called him to their side.

o

Kazuma sighed soundlessly as he watched Bishamon sleep.

They were both used to this life now. Being only the two of them in the small shrine in the Near Shore.

He knows that he can't really confide in her though. Beyond that secret that chews on his soul, she is a goddess and he is a shinki.

He isn't as bothered as he should be, he finds. Being alone comes natural to him after all.


End file.
